Chapter 11: Watched — The Key of Oslov

Volume 17: The Tinderbox

Chapter 11 Watched

Chapter Notes

Some table-setting chapters here, but things will get more intense with the next chapter, in which Janta deploys his plan to expose Besha’s rotten soul. :) Meanwhile, here’s the chapter in which Janta got Ceill on board with the plan, an event that’s referenced here. Watch out, Besha...

Chapter Notes

August, year 374

Janta was leaving the tram stop, headed for the Brothel, when he felt someone following him.It was a summer midnight in the far north—late enough for the streets of the Core to be nearly deserted, with a hard pewter sun perched on the horizon. Janta wheeled to face his pursuer and wasn’t surprised to see Bors Dartán duck into a deep window bay.Einara had told him that the rogue Int/Sec agent was bound to approach him again. The man’s signal was familiar, too: a ragged pulse of anger hemmed in by a brutal drumbeat of self-control.“Hello,” Janta said pleasantly. Though he had learned to fear Int/Sec, he felt a certain sympathy for this man, mixed with amusement. He couldn’t imagine hating himself as much as Bors clearly did.Bors skittered backward a few steps. “We need to talk,” he hissed.Janta surveyed their surroundings. He saw the cool gray walls of the Library and, in the distance, the black monoliths of Government Sector and the white column of the Quiet Revolutionary monument spearing the sky. He felt the hum of countless hidden surveillance devices.“In here.” Bors led him into a narrow alley between two tall buildings, probably bureaucratic hives that were empty for the night. When they were out of sight of the street, the Int/Sec agent sidled up to Janta, his face going very intent. “Why did you tell your friends at the Brothel that I told you Aleks Snowblind was alive?”The shift to interrogation mode was so swift and sudden that Janta stumbled over his words. “I ... I didn’t say that.”The agent took another step closer, his eyes fixed on Janta. Here on his home turf, he was far more confident than he had been at Gersha’s villa in the Southern Range. “Ah, but how else would Einara know? And she does know.”Janta always had trouble keeping up with who knew what when. He wished Tilrey or Einara were here to remind him. But he knew how he knew. “I’m not stupid, Fir. When you asked me if I’d like to be part of Aleks’s crew again, I knew he was alive.”“I never said he was.”“I can’t help it if I notice things.” Feeling slightly bolder, Janta added, “Have you come to ask me to leave with you again? To run away to the Wastes and hack those terminals for you?”Bors’s eyes widened. “Einara told you about the terminals?”If he really wants you to help him with those terminals, Einara had said about Bors, then he may seek you out again. Janta saw no point in beating around the bush. “She told me you’d probably be back when you’d found all of them,” he said, “and here you are. You want the same thing she wants, but you don’t want to let her in on it.”“That’s because Einara’s thrown in her lot with Tilrey Bronn.” Bors glanced around furtively, as if he expected to see Tilrey or Einara pop up at the mouth of the alley.Then his gaze returned to Janta, and his tone became casual—a strained casualness that Janta imagined he had practiced in front of a mirror. “Now, I know you may see Bronn and Councillor Gádden as your saviors. They took you out of a prison cell, so who can blame you? But you should know that Bronn is Magistrate Lindblom’s right-hand man, and there are people in the ruling party who’ve done things that would turn your hair white.”“There are?”“Oh, yes.” Bors leaned confidentially toward Janta, as if they were friends, but his energy wasn’t friendly. “Men with faces like blades. People who could chew you up and spit you out without even thinking about it.”A face like a blade—that made Janta think of Besha Linbeck. He had enlisted Ceill to help him scare out the Councillor’s secrets, but he was still scripting the proper approach. Linbeck was no fool; they had to use extreme delicacy. “What kind of bad things have these people done?” he asked, hoping the Int/Sec agent knew something useful.“It’s not safe to talk about that here in the city.” Bors rolled his shoulders. “But if you come with me to the nearest bunker, to Aleks—”“Does Aleks even know you’re here?” Janta did miss his friends from ’Skein—Aleks, Lasha, Bers, all of them. He hadn’t thought about them for a while, and he didn’t like the way their memories gnawed at him now. The ache of nostalgia made him vulnerable, and he couldn’t afford that in Redda.Bors nodded too eagerly. “Aleks can’t wait to see you again, Janta. He sent me to tell you that once you’re back together, he’ll reveal the entire plan. Everything will make sense. You could see him tonight, if you trust me.”The ache welled up inside Janta again. Tonight. Imagine having Lasha’s steady presence beside him and hearing Aleks’s good-natured laugh. Wherever they were and whatever they were planning, they’d welcome him in a way that no Upstarts ever could. With them, he wouldn’t feel on edge the way he did with Tilrey or confused the way he still did with Ceill, much as he liked the young Upstart’s company.Aleks and the others wouldn’t try to use him, the way Tilrey and Einara wanted to use him—or the way that Bors was trying to use him, right this minute.The man was lying. If Aleks had really wanted Janta to join him in hiding, he would have sent a message in his handwriting. More importantly, Aleks didn’t see people as tools. If he knew what had become of Janta, he would want him to stay here in Redda where he was safe. He would want Janta to learn all he could from Gersha and Ceill and to dig out the truth about Besha.Besha was important—not just to Janta, not just to the structure of the entire city, but to Ceill. Janta could feel Ceill struggling with the role he’d been given: the dutiful Upstart, the model son. His thoughts were free and sometimes even rebellious, but his actions hadn’t caught up. He needed an excuse to become the person he desperately wanted to be.And Janta needed time and space to do what he wanted to do: learn everything he could about the Net that held Redda together before he took it down.But Bors seemed to have his own timetable, and Janta didn’t trust the man’s motives.“No, thank you.” He turned on his heel and started back toward the street. The conversation had been interesting at first, but he was weary of having his social skills underestimated. At least Tilrey and Einara didn’t make that mistake.Feeling he owed Bors an explanation, he paused at the mouth of the alley. “I still have things to do in Redda,” he said. “Even if I could bring this city to a standstill using some remote terminal, I don’t want to. Not yet.”A grimace of anger burst through Bors’s carefully controlled mask. “You have a high opinion of yourself, boy.”Janta shook his head. “You’re the one who thinks only I can do this thing. If I have so much power, shouldn’t I have a say in how it’s used?”“You have no power without access to those terminals, and only I can take you there.” The Int/Sec agent bared his teeth. His pale face was livid. But Janta could feel him straining to rein himself in. “Don’t you want to challenge yourself?” Bors asked. “To prove to yourself and the world what you can do?”You couldn’t care less what happens to me. You have trouble even thinking of me as a person. “No, thank you, Fir,” Janta repeated, aiming for politeness. “I’m fine where I am.”“You talk as if you’re a Councillor. You’re no one, Janta! One word from the wrong person, and you’ll be in Int/Sec under heavy questioning. Believe me, you won’t hold out long.”For the first time, Janta sensed a new background thrum in the man’s signal: a resolution anchoring the chaos. He has a purpose. He didn’t before. Interesting.“Are you threatening me?” he asked curiously. “But no, you wouldn’t threaten me. You have too much to lose.”Bors’s face fell, rage crumpling into something queasier. It must hurt him to feel afraid of someone like Janta, but he’d put himself in that position by betraying his superiors. He must see danger everywhere.“You can’t trust Einara,” the man whispered, making a last-ditch effort to get Janta on his side, “and you definitely can’t trust Tilrey Bronn. I’m the only one Aleks trusts.”Janta had watched Bors embarrass himself long enough. He decided he wouldn’t tell Einara what had happened here today. She might want him to go off with Bors as a spy, and the last thing he wanted was to be trapped between the two of them, even if that path led him to Aleks eventually.He would help them on his own terms. When he was ready.“I’d better go, Fir Dartán.” He stepped back into the street, eyes on the purple eastern horizon. “Give my best wishes to Aleks, Lasha, and the others. Tell them I miss them.”*Something was wrong with Bors’s apartment. A shiver in the air, a vibration on the edge of his awareness. The light had a new pallid cast, pooling on the table as he tried to soothe himself with a midnight cup of tea. The whole place felt as if it had turned against him.Maybe it had. Maybe it sensed the treason in his heart.On the sofa lay the suit of black-market clothes that he’d bought for Janta this afternoon, hoping to disguise the boy as a low-level Int/Sec worker so they could fly south together. He had a decent forged ID card all ready to go, too; with any luck, no one would have scanned the chip in Janta’s hand.What a fool he’d been, leaving the clothes out in the open! He balled them up and jammed them tightly into the back of a drawer.Then he swept the entire apartment for surveillance devices.These searches had been part of his routine since he started his Int/Sec career, but on an erratic schedule—sometimes monthly, sometimes more often. Lately, he’d been so busy planning the arctic expedition that he’d forgotten all about it.The sequence of his sweep was locked into muscle memory. Under the couch cushions. Inside the light fixtures. Around the door and window frames. Inside the baseboard heating vents.He was furious at himself for not planning the approach to Janta more carefully. He’d assumed his authority would intimidate the odd little Skeinsha into coming with him, especially when he added the promise of a reunion with Aleks to the mix.But years of soft living in Redda must have quenched any authentically rebellious feelings Janta had ever had. Either that, or he was completely under Einara’s thumb. If the latter was true, Bors could expect a tiresome visit from Kai any minute now, demanding yet again to know where the terminals were.The bedroom had three pointless, decorative rafters. Bors stood on a chair and ran his fingers painstakingly along the first one, end to end.In the Arctic, Willem Rehbrandt had told him to give up, insisting there was no way to crack the terminals. But Bors couldn’t give up when he was so close. Rehbrandt’s alarming story about a high Upstart unilaterally deploying a missile was one more reason not to.Bors wasn’t sure he believed the fractured confession of a sap addict, but he was sure that too many people needed to face the consequences of their actions. Too many people had been getting away with too much for too long.If there had been any way to hold Niko Karishkov accountable for his many misdeeds through normal channels, Bors would have tried it. But Niko headed the Council’s Int/Sec committee now, which put him effectively above the law.The man needed a good yank by the collar. He needed to be shown that high names couldn’t remake the world to suit themselves.Bors stepped off the chair—he was making himself dizzy with all the stepping up and down—and shoved it a few yards along the second beam. What a silly, decadent ceiling ornament. Who thought that was a good idea? He stepped onto the chair again, reached up, and ran his fingertips along the minute crack between the beam and the ceiling.He felt something.It was no bigger than a lentil, but he knew what it was. His heart thudded as he caught it between two fingers, careful not to crush it. He had to steady himself before returning to the floor.A tiny bead of metal and circuitry—standard Int/Sec issue for audio-visual surveillance. It wasn’t large enough to have a transmitter; whoever had planted it would need to retrieve it to access the data.How long had it been here? How many others had been here before it?For a wild instant, holding the tiny device in his palm, Bors thought Niko Karishkov must have bugged him.Then he came to his senses. Niko didn’t respect him enough to recognize him as an enemy. As for Einara, she had motivation, but she had no access to Int/Sec devices unless Tilrey Bronn had helpfully provided one.Yes. Bronn had done this. He wanted to crack those terminals, too, and if he ever succeeded—Bors didn’t want to think about that. Bronn was part of the True Hearth.Bors might be a rebel now, but he believed in the ideals of Oslov. The True Hearth were rabble; they had no respect for anything but chaos. Bors had sensed the movement’s ruthlessness in the cold, callous way Tilrey had treated him decades ago, when he had Bors at his mercy.The current government must be toppled, yes. But the raw-boned, dangerous energies of the workers must be controlled. Otherwise, they might bring down civilization itself.Shuddering from head to toe, Bors brought the bug to his desktop for analysis. What the hell was wrong with him? Was he turning into a civilian like Valgund? Now was when he needed to access his steely, professional core.He closed his eyes and drew a few deep breaths. When he opened his eyes again, his hands were steady, and his thoughts were ice cold.Never mind Janta. Bors would find a way to persuade the little fool. In time, everything would fall into place.

August, year 374

Janta was leaving the tram stop, headed for the Brothel, when he felt someone following him.

It was a summer midnight in the far north—late enough for the streets of the Core to be nearly deserted, with a hard pewter sun perched on the horizon. Janta wheeled to face his pursuer and wasn’t surprised to see Bors Dartán duck into a deep window bay.

Einara had told him that the rogue Int/Sec agent was bound to approach him again. The man’s signal was familiar, too: a ragged pulse of anger hemmed in by a brutal drumbeat of self-control.

“Hello,” Janta said pleasantly. Though he had learned to fear Int/Sec, he felt a certain sympathy for this man, mixed with amusement. He couldn’t imagine hating himself as much as Bors clearly did.

Bors skittered backward a few steps. “We need to talk,” he hissed.

Janta surveyed their surroundings. He saw the cool gray walls of the Library and, in the distance, the black monoliths of Government Sector and the white column of the Quiet Revolutionary monument spearing the sky. He felt the hum of countless hidden surveillance devices.

“In here.” Bors led him into a narrow alley between two tall buildings, probably bureaucratic hives that were empty for the night. When they were out of sight of the street, the Int/Sec agent sidled up to Janta, his face going very intent. “Why did you tell your friends at the Brothel that I told you Aleks Snowblind was alive?”

The shift to interrogation mode was so swift and sudden that Janta stumbled over his words. “I ... I didn’t say that.”

The agent took another step closer, his eyes fixed on Janta. Here on his home turf, he was far more confident than he had been at Gersha’s villa in the Southern Range. “Ah, but how else would Einara know? And she does know.”

Janta always had trouble keeping up with who knew what when. He wished Tilrey or Einara were here to remind him. But he knew how he knew. “I’m not stupid, Fir. When you asked me if I’d like to be part of Aleks’s crew again, I knew he was alive.”

“I never said he was.”

“I can’t help it if I notice things.” Feeling slightly bolder, Janta added, “Have you come to ask me to leave with you again? To run away to the Wastes and hack those terminals for you?”

Bors’s eyes widened. “Einara told you about the terminals?”

If he really wants you to help him with those terminals, Einara had said about Bors, then he may seek you out again. Janta saw no point in beating around the bush. “She told me you’d probably be back when you’d found all of them,” he said, “and here you are. You want the same thing she wants, but you don’t want to let her in on it.”

“That’s because Einara’s thrown in her lot with Tilrey Bronn.” Bors glanced around furtively, as if he expected to see Tilrey or Einara pop up at the mouth of the alley.

Then his gaze returned to Janta, and his tone became casual—a strained casualness that Janta imagined he had practiced in front of a mirror. “Now, I know you may see Bronn and Councillor Gádden as your saviors. They took you out of a prison cell, so who can blame you? But you should know that Bronn is Magistrate Lindblom’s right-hand man, and there are people in the ruling party who’ve done things that would turn your hair white.”

“There are?”

“Oh, yes.” Bors leaned confidentially toward Janta, as if they were friends, but his energy wasn’t friendly. “Men with faces like blades. People who could chew you up and spit you out without even thinking about it.”

A face like a blade—that made Janta think of Besha Linbeck. He had enlisted Ceill to help him scare out the Councillor’s secrets, but he was still scripting the proper approach. Linbeck was no fool; they had to use extreme delicacy. “What kind of bad things have these people done?” he asked, hoping the Int/Sec agent knew something useful.

“It’s not safe to talk about that here in the city.” Bors rolled his shoulders. “But if you come with me to the nearest bunker, to Aleks—”

“Does Aleks even know you’re here?” Janta did miss his friends from ’Skein—Aleks, Lasha, Bers, all of them. He hadn’t thought about them for a while, and he didn’t like the way their memories gnawed at him now. The ache of nostalgia made him vulnerable, and he couldn’t afford that in Redda.

Bors nodded too eagerly. “Aleks can’t wait to see you again, Janta. He sent me to tell you that once you’re back together, he’ll reveal the entire plan. Everything will make sense. You could see him tonight, if you trust me.”

The ache welled up inside Janta again. Tonight. Imagine having Lasha’s steady presence beside him and hearing Aleks’s good-natured laugh. Wherever they were and whatever they were planning, they’d welcome him in a way that no Upstarts ever could. With them, he wouldn’t feel on edge the way he did with Tilrey or confused the way he still did with Ceill, much as he liked the young Upstart’s company.

Aleks and the others wouldn’t try to use him, the way Tilrey and Einara wanted to use him—or the way that Bors was trying to use him, right this minute.

The man was lying. If Aleks had really wanted Janta to join him in hiding, he would have sent a message in his handwriting. More importantly, Aleks didn’t see people as tools. If he knew what had become of Janta, he would want him to stay here in Redda where he was safe. He would want Janta to learn all he could from Gersha and Ceill and to dig out the truth about Besha.

Besha was important—not just to Janta, not just to the structure of the entire city, but to Ceill. Janta could feel Ceill struggling with the role he’d been given: the dutiful Upstart, the model son. His thoughts were free and sometimes even rebellious, but his actions hadn’t caught up. He needed an excuse to become the person he desperately wanted to be.

And Janta needed time and space to do what he wanted to do: learn everything he could about the Net that held Redda together before he took it down.

But Bors seemed to have his own timetable, and Janta didn’t trust the man’s motives.

“No, thank you.” He turned on his heel and started back toward the street. The conversation had been interesting at first, but he was weary of having his social skills underestimated. At least Tilrey and Einara didn’t make that mistake.

Feeling he owed Bors an explanation, he paused at the mouth of the alley. “I still have things to do in Redda,” he said. “Even if I could bring this city to a standstill using some remote terminal, I don’t want to. Not yet.”

A grimace of anger burst through Bors’s carefully controlled mask. “You have a high opinion of yourself, boy.”

Janta shook his head. “You’re the one who thinks only I can do this thing. If I have so much power, shouldn’t I have a say in how it’s used?”

“You have no power without access to those terminals, and only I can take you there.” The Int/Sec agent bared his teeth. His pale face was livid. But Janta could feel him straining to rein himself in. “Don’t you want to challenge yourself?” Bors asked. “To prove to yourself and the world what you can do?”

You couldn’t care less what happens to me. You have trouble even thinking of me as a person. “No, thank you, Fir,” Janta repeated, aiming for politeness. “I’m fine where I am.”

“You talk as if you’re a Councillor. You’re no one, Janta! One word from the wrong person, and you’ll be in Int/Sec under heavy questioning. Believe me, you won’t hold out long.”

For the first time, Janta sensed a new background thrum in the man’s signal: a resolution anchoring the chaos. He has a purpose. He didn’t before. Interesting.

“Are you threatening me?” he asked curiously. “But no, you wouldn’t threaten me. You have too much to lose.”

Bors’s face fell, rage crumpling into something queasier. It must hurt him to feel afraid of someone like Janta, but he’d put himself in that position by betraying his superiors. He must see danger everywhere.

“You can’t trust Einara,” the man whispered, making a last-ditch effort to get Janta on his side, “and you definitely can’t trust Tilrey Bronn. I’m the only one Aleks trusts.”

Janta had watched Bors embarrass himself long enough. He decided he wouldn’t tell Einara what had happened here today. She might want him to go off with Bors as a spy, and the last thing he wanted was to be trapped between the two of them, even if that path led him to Aleks eventually.

He would help them on his own terms. When he was ready.

“I’d better go, Fir Dartán.” He stepped back into the street, eyes on the purple eastern horizon. “Give my best wishes to Aleks, Lasha, and the others. Tell them I miss them.”

Something was wrong with Bors’s apartment. A shiver in the air, a vibration on the edge of his awareness. The light had a new pallid cast, pooling on the table as he tried to soothe himself with a midnight cup of tea. The whole place felt as if it had turned against him.

Maybe it had. Maybe it sensed the treason in his heart.

On the sofa lay the suit of black-market clothes that he’d bought for Janta this afternoon, hoping to disguise the boy as a low-level Int/Sec worker so they could fly south together. He had a decent forged ID card all ready to go, too; with any luck, no one would have scanned the chip in Janta’s hand.

What a fool he’d been, leaving the clothes out in the open! He balled them up and jammed them tightly into the back of a drawer.

Then he swept the entire apartment for surveillance devices.

These searches had been part of his routine since he started his Int/Sec career, but on an erratic schedule—sometimes monthly, sometimes more often. Lately, he’d been so busy planning the arctic expedition that he’d forgotten all about it.

The sequence of his sweep was locked into muscle memory. Under the couch cushions. Inside the light fixtures. Around the door and window frames. Inside the baseboard heating vents.

He was furious at himself for not planning the approach to Janta more carefully. He’d assumed his authority would intimidate the odd little Skeinsha into coming with him, especially when he added the promise of a reunion with Aleks to the mix.

But years of soft living in Redda must have quenched any authentically rebellious feelings Janta had ever had. Either that, or he was completely under Einara’s thumb. If the latter was true, Bors could expect a tiresome visit from Kai any minute now, demanding yet again to know where the terminals were.

The bedroom had three pointless, decorative rafters. Bors stood on a chair and ran his fingers painstakingly along the first one, end to end.

In the Arctic, Willem Rehbrandt had told him to give up, insisting there was no way to crack the terminals. But Bors couldn’t give up when he was so close. Rehbrandt’s alarming story about a high Upstart unilaterally deploying a missile was one more reason not to.

Bors wasn’t sure he believed the fractured confession of a sap addict, but he was sure that too many people needed to face the consequences of their actions. Too many people had been getting away with too much for too long.

If there had been any way to hold Niko Karishkov accountable for his many misdeeds through normal channels, Bors would have tried it. But Niko headed the Council’s Int/Sec committee now, which put him effectively above the law.

The man needed a good yank by the collar. He needed to be shown that high names couldn’t remake the world to suit themselves.

Bors stepped off the chair—he was making himself dizzy with all the stepping up and down—and shoved it a few yards along the second beam. What a silly, decadent ceiling ornament. Who thought that was a good idea? He stepped onto the chair again, reached up, and ran his fingertips along the minute crack between the beam and the ceiling.

He felt something.

It was no bigger than a lentil, but he knew what it was. His heart thudded as he caught it between two fingers, careful not to crush it. He had to steady himself before returning to the floor.

A tiny bead of metal and circuitry—standard Int/Sec issue for audio-visual surveillance. It wasn’t large enough to have a transmitter; whoever had planted it would need to retrieve it to access the data.

How long had it been here? How many others had been here before it?

For a wild instant, holding the tiny device in his palm, Bors thought Niko Karishkov must have bugged him.

Then he came to his senses. Niko didn’t respect him enough to recognize him as an enemy. As for Einara, she had motivation, but she had no access to Int/Sec devices unless Tilrey Bronn had helpfully provided one.

Yes. Bronn had done this. He wanted to crack those terminals, too, and if he ever succeeded—Bors didn’t want to think about that. Bronn was part of the True Hearth.

Bors might be a rebel now, but he believed in the ideals of Oslov. The True Hearth were rabble; they had no respect for anything but chaos. Bors had sensed the movement’s ruthlessness in the cold, callous way Tilrey had treated him decades ago, when he had Bors at his mercy.

The current government must be toppled, yes. But the raw-boned, dangerous energies of the workers must be controlled. Otherwise, they might bring down civilization itself.

Shuddering from head to toe, Bors brought the bug to his desktop for analysis. What the hell was wrong with him? Was he turning into a civilian like Valgund? Now was when he needed to access his steely, professional core.

He closed his eyes and drew a few deep breaths. When he opened his eyes again, his hands were steady, and his thoughts were ice cold.

Never mind Janta. Bors would find a way to persuade the little fool. In time, everything would fall into place.